CNC Machine Paintball Gun Printer!

(yawn) (Terminator-esque music) (whirring) (rapid fire) Okay What do you get when you strap a
gun to an automated machine? Art! In this episode of Joel Creates we’re gonna be turning my CNC machine into a working printer It turns out that a CNC machine
and a printer are actually very similar A CNC machine has three axis of movement The machine will move along its y-axis and x-axis and then it’s z-axis is
up-and-down The way that a printer works is that the paper is the y-axis and then
x-axis moves back and forth as it applies ink By attaching a paintball gun
to my CNC machine and loading in different colors I can actually turn
this into a giant, loud, dangerous printer In order to do this project properly I
needed to order a bunch of different colors of paintballs I’ve got orange and
yellow; two different shades of blue I think these are green even though
they’re purple on the outside We got red or “blood balls” as they’re called Here’s the paintball gun This is a Tippmann 98 custom and it’s the flagship paintball gun at the paintball world Very reliable- I got this one on
Craigslist for 30 bucks I’ve relocated the CO2 tank from being on the handle to being down here so that the tank can sit upright If it’s set upside down like it
normally would be oriented, then liquid CO2 would more likely come out than
gaseous CO2 and that could cause some freezing issues I’ve modified the hopper
feed system A piece of threaded rod passes through the trigger When the z-axis moves the gun down, it will pull the trigger All I have to do is program
this machine to move around drilling “holes”. As it moves down to drill a hole
it’ll pull the trigger and then move back up and move on to the next “hole” I did some test fires of the gun and found that the paintball splats were about 2
inches in diameter on average The next thing I had to do is to make a grid of 2-inch holes on my CNC bed Given the size of my CNC machine I have a resolution of
about 24 by 30 I ordered this 4 foot by 100 foot roll
of recycled paper This is what I’ll use when I need a fresh canvas We’re about to turn on the only paintball CNC printer in existence and we’re gonna create an interpretation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night My wife, Kirsten, made the
artistic reduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night using the very very limited number
of pixels we had–not an easy task It’s time to make some art… with machines Whoa! (Music: “It’sa Me!”) All right- what should have been done at
the beginning: we have plastic’d off the area (Music: “It’sa Me!”) Ta Da! I’ts a pile of S**T! You know I thought it would at
least kind of, maybe – This is so much work -look sort of- (defeated laughter) -It’s really bad Hey Tippmann, you wanna sponsor? It’s a big pile of crap, it looks terrible let’s- let’s just
call spade a spade I think the next thing that I paint should be maybe a
little less… ambitious Alright so maybe using a highly expressive, nuanced piece of iconic art isn’t the best idea for such a low resolution and messy and
brightly colored device But you know what might do well? What about something
that was actually designed to work within an already very limited
resolution, with limited colors? (Music: “It’sa Me!”) (Mario…impression?) La la la la la la…LA These translated over a lot
better than Starry Night, and it’s no wonder: limited colors and limited pixels Thank you so much for watching If you enjoyed this video, consider subscribing because I’m getting crazier every single day Always be careful when strapping a
gun to an automated machine Before I end this video I’ve got to give some credit
to my friend Graydon Schwartz His help and expertise as a cameraman really helped
to bump up the quality on the intro of this video He’s got some breathtaking
drone videos on his channel that I would highly recommend checking out The other
thing that I really have to mention is that we passed 500 subscribers… and a thousand… and 1500 the last I checked To those who have stuck it out this far: it’s been great to have you along and thank you for your loyalty And to you new subscribers: I hope you enjoyed this newest video; thank you so much So many people have responded in such an overwhelmingly positive way I’m so touched and thankful that I have the opportunity to do this The thing is that words so seldom can convey what the heart yearns to express and that’s why I
think the best way to say my feelings is in song (piano flourish.. he’s clearly showing off) (Game Over) (laughter)

Amazing videos, i came here from your michael reeves video, love to see a rather professionally produced video. Keep it up man! your sub count seems to have gone up a bit, gl further, and if you need any assistance related to programming. I could probably help.

Hey you could get much better resolution by layering the paintball shots. like lets say you have a 16x16in grid painting and you wanted to put a little blotch of color in that was less than a circle of 2in diameter. you could shoot in the middle say at 5, 5 then shoot more paint balls covering up the edges like at 4, 4, 4, 6 6, 6, then again at 6, 4. That would leave a small squareish thing in the midle but you could also control the shape by making a crescent by shooting at 5, 5 before beginning the rest. you could actually get the paint ball rings to texture out like starry starry night if you really tried but I recomemnd starting with an impressionistic painting of the river Thames before trying Van Gogh

I've seen three of your vids now and absolutely adore all of them, You definitely get my subscription and I hope to see more videos from you soon, You're by far one of my favourite youtubers already.+1 Sub